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Face Transplants

I have no problems with face transplants, per se, save for the limited caveats I've enumerated earlier in this thread.

But "brain-dead doner" still gives me chills.
 
Face transplants, like most organ transplants, have a limited timespan. In this case, a face transplant from 2013 is clearly deteriorating to the point the patient must confront the prospect of reverting to her earlier disfigurement.
Her body is rejecting a transplanted face — and one solution is unthinkable

Carmen Blandin Tarleton does not want to go backward. She is fighting for a third face.

Tarleton, 12 years removed from her estranged husband’s attack with a baseball bat and lye that burned most of her body, gained some of her life back after dozens of surgeries and a 2013 face transplant. She could play the piano. And a synthetic cornea helped her see out of one eye, allowing her to find her way around Manchester, N.H.

For years, the contours of her new face have swollen in rejection episodes that doctors successfully treated. But now, at 51 years old, with blood vessels cut off and her facial tissue darkening and dying, Tarleton’s immune system is fully rejecting her face.

That has forced her to confront two arduous possibilities: Receive another new face, or if her tissue rapidly fails, undergo reconstruction of her original face — and return to her disfigurement she left behind six years ago.

“We all know we are in uncharted waters,” she told the Boston Globe. “I would rather not have to go through a catastrophic failure.’’

Transplanted organs, like kidneys, hearts and lungs, typically have a limited life span in their new bodies. But doctors caution that the field of face transplants is still experimental, with no long-term studies or risk assessments to guide surgeons in a procedure only conducted about 40 times worldwide ...

FULL STORY: https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...ransplanted-face-one-solution-is-unthinkable/
 
New Jersey resident Joe DiMeo is continuing to recover from a face and double hand transplant 6 months ago. If the story interests you, be sure to check the slideshow illustrating Mr. DiMeo's reconstruction and (e.g.) his working out at a gym. There's also a video ...
‘New chance at life’: Man gets face, hands in rare surgery

Almost six months after a rare face and hands transplant, Joe DiMeo is relearning how to smile, blink, pinch and squeeze.

The 22-year-old New Jersey resident had the operation last August, two years after being badly burned in a car crash.

“I knew it would be baby steps all the way,” DiMeo told The Associated Press. “You’ve got to have a lot of motivation, a lot of patience. And you’ve got to stay strong through everything.”

Experts say it appears the surgery at NYU Langone Health was a success, but warn it’ll take some time to say for sure.

Worldwide, surgeons have completed at least 18 face transplants and 35 hand transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which oversees the U.S. transplant system. ...

But simultaneous face and double hand transplants are extremely rare and have only been tried twice before. The first attempt was in 2009 on a patient in Paris who died about a month later from complications. Two years later, Boston doctors tried it again on a woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee, but ultimately had to remove the transplanted hands days later. ...

FULL STORY (With Slideshow & Video):
https://apnews.com/article/face-hand-transplant-joe-dimeo-1e11f620bd84c817e99b00bdf874625a
 
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